pgrothe

I spent the day at Calabogie Motorsports Park last weekend. One of the other driver in a Yaris had a video camera inside his car and filmed one of my first session.

I had some issue at that moment and wasn't pushing the car to much in the corners. The car was really hot and all the throttle blips that I made were throwing flames out of my exhaust.
I received many comments from the other drivers about that "feature". There were amazed and found that really cool.

That day was really great for the ego, I received many great comments about my car coming from gt-r, Porsche and Corvette owners. I was a bit surprised at first but realized that they have probably never seen any Mazdaspeed body kit before.

I had the chance to ride a Porsche GT3 and a Corvette Z06... What great day for a motorhead like me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S15DQ3COva0

StealthTL

iTrader: (1)

Yes, but the title of the video is "Toyota Yaris vs. RX-8"......
and he keeps up with you quite well.....

I do love the track name though - Calabogie.

kersh4w

iTrader: (3)

you should have left that yaris in the dust, but he is a much better driver than you. lol. no worries though. looking at all the places he has gone, he has much more experience than both of us combined.

you need to focus a lot on your line throughout the turns.

pgrothe

Yes he is a much better driver than me. He was extremely calm always resting alone and didn't speek much. He a kind of the "stig" :-D. Like you said, he has a lot of experience. He was also able to take different lines than me because of the weight difference and his low speed. Look at his other video where he race against Corvettes at Laguna Seca, this guy is awesome.

I am not experienced at all, it was my second session on that track and it's a very difficult track. Try to keep the count of the corners. There is 20 of them and half of them are really difficult to master.
I improved my laps alot at the end of the day and he wasn't able to keepup. I was able to pass s2000 easily.

I always had to look at my back because there was so many Cayman, Z06 and Carrera that day. I felt like I had the poor man car.

I should do better next time. Anyway, I had a lot of fun.

Ross_Dawg

iTrader: (2)

^werd. nice bursts though... sure made the 8 look good in the straights

pgrothe

It's a brand new track near Ottawa. Everybody that try it only have praises for it.

I never said I was doing good :-). It was one of my first attemp over there and was still learning the curves plus fixing some issues with my OMP adapter and the overheat from the engine.

G3tR3DDY2GR3DDY

iTrader: (8)

yea, not trying to badmouth you, but the yaris definitely has some better lines than you. And sounds like its automatic

Yaris is actually a pretty well handling car though. so not too bad.

Brian Major

iTrader: (1)

sucks that you had to take it easy but the flames looked really cool.

pgrothe

The issue is not the car, only the driver (ME) :-D BTW it's not an automatic, it's just that hes very good at shifting. Don't compare the lines, the weight differences allows him to take diffent lines with the speed that he had. I made some rides with intructors in their track cars and they were using almost the same lines as me, totally different as him.

BTW his suspension was modified (can't remember what he had) and had SSR light wheels to help him :-)

In that round I wasn't paying much attention to the best lines, I was looking at the temperature, the flames and my fuel trims.
After that lap I reseted the ECU and cleared the trims, which were at -10 for the ltft and +10 for the stft (or the other way around). After that I had no more pop from the exhaust (flames) and had more fun taking the curves.

pgrothe

Anyway, I was there to test my new setup. There was even one time I had to stop to the padock after I've seen a huge cloud of smoke at the end of my car. Someone asked me if I had transformed my car to make it work like the batmobile to throw smoke clouds to loose people behind.

I never found what it was and never did it again.

altspace

iTrader: (2)

No braking in the corner. (tsk tsk)

lepichichi

iTrader: (10)

Cool.

kersh4w

iTrader: (3)

i also want to point out that the yaris was probably supercharged as well. or at least some form of forced induction. i've seen videos of a yaris with a supercharger @ 120whp. lol. thats a +40whp improvement though.

and here is a picture to help you next time you go.

pgrothe

Lol.. thanks, knowing that stuff was not the issue :-) Knowing all the curves and having all my focus on the track would help though.
By the way, it's not simple as your graph shows, it dosn't take in account the angle and elevation of the curve, you don't always have to go wide if it's not needed.
It was my 4th or 5th lap on that track to life, and there is 20 curves to learn... give me a chance :-) I was so much concentrated at hearing the engine on the first lap that I even forgot that there was a curve at some point.
Like I said my other sessions were way much faster than this one and never seen the Yaris on my back once. I had a fight with a STI for a few laps and had no difficulties losing him in the curves. You can see the STI on some other videos from that Yaris guy.

Speaking of the Yaris, his engine was stock... 105hp. The driver was very good tho and the weight was helping him a lot. I've looked at some of his lines and he was totally off on some of them. Even with those errors, he was able to keep his speed consistent because he wasn't dragged out by the centrifugal force like the heavier cars.

Take a look at his video on Laguna Seca... he was able to follow a Corvette!! That’s impressive.